Warm-up questions on early childhood memories affect the reported age of earliest memories in late adolescence

Abstract

Researchers have recently used warm-up questions concerning childhood memories at specific early ages (e.g. 3 years of age) in an attempt to facilitate the retrieval process on the subsequent question regarding the earliest memory. Although this methodology may indeed facilitate the retrieval process by conducting the test in a manner resembling ordinary dialogue, the methodology might also unintentionally put further demand characteristics on the respondents. In the present study we systematically manipulated the target age (either 3 or 6 years of age) for the warm-up question preceding the ‘earliest memory’ question in order to test this possibility. The participants were 445 Danish high school students (M age=17.94). The results revealed that systematically manipulating the target age for the warm-up question had a strong impact on the age of the earliest memory reported by the adolescents. Participants who received warm-up questions with 3 years as the target age subsequently reported earlier first memories than the participants receiving warm-up questions with 6 years as the target age. These results have important implications for the methodology involved in research on childhood amnesia.